Olivia The Girl
by bforbrigitta
Summary: One woman's journey into becoming Olivia the agent, Olivia the friend and Olivia the mother.
1. Chapter 1

_One woman's journey into becoming Olivia the agent, Olivia the friend and Olivia the mother._

**Olivia The Girl**  
_Chapter 1_

Olivia was always good with numbers—when she started at Northwestern, she thought she'd be an accountant or a banker. But for as long as she could remember, being in the FBI had always been in the back of her mind, and at eighteen she made the decision to seriously pursue a career in law enforcement.

When she was nineteen, she dreamed of being a cop for the first time. She hadn't had a gun pointed at her before and she couldn't shake the fear of death or the deep, searing pulses of her heart (she was asleep but they were unmistakably real, Olivia was sure). She wasn't ready to die, not even close, and when she jolted awake in a cold sweat she had seriously considered giving up then and there. Maybe go back to that accounting major she left. What would she know, after all? She was just nineteen—she was a kid (but she marched on, despite being afraid, because that is exactly what her stepfather used to tell her, and she would _not_ let him be proven right after all these years).

Her mother, though, worried about her, and would later die to never know how capable and, most of all, excellent an agent she would become. Growing up abused, she had always been sensitive and mild-mannered—and she used to feel so goddamned ill-equipped for the nature of the work. It became bigger than just the jeering or catcalling. But even though she, at first, desperately tried to avoid the glare of being one of the only women in her division, the condescension of her male peers only ended up empowering her to transform her weaknesses into what became her vitality (eventually she'd even learn to no longer retreat into her room and cry at the end of a particularly hard day).

Olivia was good with numbers—this much was true—but she was even better at doing the right thing, protecting the helpless and surviving innumerable calamities. She was no longer afraid of death, she found, but the stakes were different this time. She wouldn't want—couldn't bare, even if in an afterlife—to miss out on her life with Peter or Etta. She wouldn't want her daughter to be robbed of what she was robbed of too. So every day she comes to work, ready to evade death once again.

{tbc}

Chapter 2 coming soon.


	2. Chapter 2

_One woman's journey into becoming Olivia the agent, Olivia the friend and Olivia the mother._

**Olivia The Girl  
**_Chapter 2_

Once in a while, Olivia struggled with regrets that were long past but unforgotten.

It's not that she was ridden with them. She'd learnt to accept the things that didn't go her way (which were essentially just a collision of various cosmic misalignments; someone in the universe had a twisted sense of humour), but there were incidents like _Charlie_ that she still couldn't help but give herself grief for. And when he was gone there was a space in her heart that would never be filled, because now he would never know how much it meant to her that he understood her the way he did.

And sometimes, because of that, among memory overrides and timeline readjustments, she'd felt like she missed the window with Lincoln. Like it was something that should've been important. That maybe Lincoln could've filled that void that Charlie left behind but then she knew that that bond could never be replaced because things with Charlie weren't supposed to be done. They were left, in suspense, in that hospital room after Olivia was first thrust into the other universe then thrust back out (it was ironic, because he was dead and she was alive but she was the one with the unfinished business that couldn't ever be resolved because the living could never penetrate the grave. Sometimes she wished Walter was around to fix that. But she wished Walter was around for a lot of things).

Of course, in hindsight, this worked out very well for both Lincoln and Olivia. And she knew that but it didn't stop from keeping Olivia up some nights.

(Olivia was a waking thinker. Nights weren't only for sleeping.)

Some days Astrid would come over to play with Etta, and Olivia would watch her, memorising every smile line on her face and every curl on her head, in case another Olivia from a distant timeline threatened to overwrite her again too (despite it giving her a lot of things, like Peter and their love and her life "back" if you could really say that she had lost it in the first place) but she's missed enough chances and she was not going to let another one slip by—not when Astrid's lost so much too.

(Sometimes Astrid looked at Etta as if she was the Walter that she lost, looking for him inside of her. More often than not, she found him—traces—but undoubtedly there)

Some nights when her thoughts weren't of her family or work, or of the Lincoln or Charlie that never came to be, they were on the old fragments of the lonely soul she had been for most of her life. And she thought of the Olivia from the other universe, with her lush auburn hair, girl friends and wild, unforgettable nights that weren't just her in a lab with the same three people every time. But then she'd look to her left where Peter slept and then down at the little blonde head between them and let it sink in. One night when Etta made her first friend at daycare, she was reassured of her peace.

"Just like mom and Aunt Astrid," she'd chirped in her little voice.

Olivia had hesitated at first. Over the years she didn't think that they'd had so much of a friendship as they did a 'quiet companionship'. Because Olivia didn't like throwing words like "love" or "friend" around unless she meant it, and she, classically Olivia, thought about it long and hard.

If a friend was someone that she'd spent almost all of the last eight years with, who had her complete and profound trust and whose capacity to love she deeply revered, then Astrid was still so much more than that.

She tucked a strand of hair behind Etta's ear before giving her reply.

(Maybe in another time, in another universe where she wasn't broken, she'd have another chance. But this is her life, and they may be in fragments but the pieces are all still there and she will cherish everything she can salvage.)

"Now that's something special, baby girl."

{tbc}

Chapter 3 coming soon.


End file.
